


Justice

by draconicsockpuppet



Series: tuesnight: the eighth day of the week [5]
Category: Dwarf Fortress
Genre: Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-Typical Vore, Gen, Genocide, Necromancy, Revenge, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:34:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23650018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draconicsockpuppet/pseuds/draconicsockpuppet
Summary: In the year 844, the elves of the Sea of Ivy attacked the fortress Bronzebelts, mountainhome of the dwarven civilization the Scholarly Book, as part of the Conflict of Disembowelment. While endless waves of elves overwhelmed the dwarves of Bronzebelts, a single survivor escaped to the north.– FromChronicles of the Southby Osod Bleachedcarcass. (Bonecurled, 1297.)
Series: tuesnight: the eighth day of the week [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1713367
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12
Collections: What Fen Do (Instead of Going Outside), When Death Loves Flamingos





	Justice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tuesnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesnight/gifts).



Her name was Mafol Craftsguarded, and she was a hunter and animal trainer by trade. She had been out checking the cage traps when the elven army arrived, and had returned to the fortress too late to be of much use. Her quiver empty of bolts, she began charging towards the battle when she saw her sister, Zefon Cryptwasps, wade out into the fray at the head of her crack squad of soldiers, the Iron Lakes, pride of Bronzebelts.

And Mafol watched as her sister was struck down by an elf in a golden crown.

Thalu Cycloneangel had been queen of the Sea of Ivy for over eight hundred years, and her prowess with her simple oaken spear was legendary. Zefon was well trained and better armored, and yet she never stood a chance.

"Run!" yelled Kubuk Helmsflare, king of the dwarves. "Run and live another day!"

He, too, was struck down. Thalu Cycloneheart ripped his heart from his chest and ate it right there, king's blood covering her face and chest as she devoured hot fresh dwarven flesh. Mafol ran. When she reached the top of the ridge and looked back, the dwarves on the field were dead, and the elves were eating their remains.

"I'll avenge you," she whispered, and then she ran north. Bronzebelts, last stronghold of the dwarves, had fallen. All hope for her people was lost. Yet the desire for vengeance remained; bitter as it was, Mafol held that hunger dear.

She'd heard tales of the tower Bonecurled, deep in the Dunes of Flaying. It had been erected many years ago by the dwarf Ast Vesselsquids, once a weaponsmith of the Scholarly Book, and a devout worshipper of the death goddess Reksas. Long ago, traveling minstrels had visited the taverns of Bronzebelts regularly. They'd told tales of the blasted deserts surrounding the tower, the shambling corpses surrounding it, and the trove of books therein. Most dwarves had laughed off the stories as mere entertainment, but Mafol remembered.

Bonecurled was a place of death, but there she might find what she needed to make the elves pay. And pay they would, no matter the cost to Mafol herself. This she vowed.

She traveled north for weeks, passing stealthily through the forest while avoiding numerous elven patrols. Her prowess in the field kept her fed, though the empty flask at her hip taunted her with the sweet smell of ale until even the fumes were gone. 

The weather grew hotter and hotter, and the beasts larger and larger, until Mafol reached the edge of the lush jungle and looked out over a strip of savannah. Beyond the grasslands, barely visible in the far distance, lay the bright blood-red sands of the Dunes of Flaying.

Death did not frighten Mafol; only failure could. She pressed on, following a narrow brook up through the sands. A lack of bolts for her crossbow made hunting difficult, but snakes were easy to catch with a forked stick and her knife. She ate the meat barely singed over short-lived fires built of dead grass. So sustained by raw meat and muddy water, she came at last to the tower.

Bonecurled was a single tall tower of white limestone that rose above the desert like a twisted rib. The dunes nearby were patrolled by the dead: shuffling, shambling corpses of elves and dwarves and men and goblins alike. They were easy enough to avoid in groups of two or three, but as Mafol neared her goal, the air shimmered with heat, and the dead grew more frequent, in larger packs. At last she came upon a band of the walking dead accompanied by a living human master. The corpse-creatures quickly subdued her and carried her to the tower in chains. No matter. Mafol was not dead yet. She would plead her case, and if she died and was eaten, at least her flesh would not nourish the elf-queen's endless hordes of pointy-eared bastards.

"Good luck," said the human with a smirk as he dumped her, well-trussed and gagged, in the topmost room of the tower.

What an odd thing to say to a prisoner.

There was a shuffling sound behind her. Mafol squirmed and tried to wriggle out of her bonds, but to no avail.

"Enough, child," said a gravelly voice. "Why are you here?"

She finally managed to sit up and twist around. Before her stood a gnarled dwarf, so old that his beard brushed the tops of his feet, dressed in a simple black robe with a scroll in his hands.

"Mmmph," Mafol said. "Grmmph."

The old dwarf knelt down before her. "If you bite me, I will rip out each of your teeth one by one, and then I will implant them in your forehead." He sounded like he meant it, too. When he reached for the gag, Mafol let him take it. He rose slowly, joints creaking, and pointed at her. "Now. I ask again. Why are you here?"

"The elves of the Sea of Ivy overran Bronzebelts. I watched my sister fall in battle, I watched the elf-queen eat my king's heart. I came to beg for vengeance."

The old dwarf gave a deep sigh and looked away. "I have no interest in such mortal concerns, child. You have come here in vain."

"Then teach me!" Mafol cried out. "Teach me so that I can avenge my homeland myself."

The old dwarf slowly turned his head. "You wish to learn the ways of the dead? You wish to learn necromancy."

"Yes." If he wouldn't help, of course she would do everything she could to avenge the dwarves of Bronzebelts herself.

"Very well." A smile spread across the old dwarf's face, and his eyes gleamed with interest. He held out the scroll to her, the strange, eerie characters on it twisting and swirling into dwarven letters as Mafol stared at them. "Can you read?"

Mafol bit her lip. "I, Reksas, in the height of my power, do command thee…" She blinked. "Wait. What is this?"

The old dwarf grinned and snatched the scroll back to his chest. "Good enough." He raised his voice. "Cadem! Osod! Come and greet your new sister."

Oh no. She'd have to be polite to the annoying human now, wouldn't she.

* * *

_In 844, mid summer, the dwarf Mafol Craftsguarded fled the sack of Bronzebelts during the Conflict of Disembowelment._

_In 844, late summer, the dwarven necromancer Ast Vesselsquids taught Mafol Craftsguarded the secrets of life and death._

_In 844, late summer, Mafol Craftsguarded settled in Bonecurled._

_In 844, late summer, Mafol Craftsguarded began an apprenticeship under the dwarven necromancer Ast Vesselsquids._

* * *

Learning necromancy was more like hunting than Mafol had expected. Her new teacher released her from her bonds with the flick of a single gnarled finger, then led her to the library and left her there. She read and read and read some more, taking breaks only to eat food delivered by shambling corpses or to sleep in her chair. She devoured chronicles of history and philosophy and natural science, musings on the meaning and purpose of death, or the practical uses of the dead. Yet what she wished for was nowhere to be found: the secrets she needed, the power to destroy her enemies, the words to raise the dead and make them fight. Mafol felt like she'd waded through a sea of useless blather with nothing to show for it.

A decade earlier, she had learned to hunt immediately after the last evidence of the festivities of her twelfth birthday had been cleaned up. Her mother had given her a crossbow and a quiver full of alpaca bone bolts and taken her to the front gate of Bronzebelts, then swung her arms out at the forest beyond. "Go get 'em, kiddo," her mother had said, and then she'd stomped her way inside, leaving Mafol to figure out the use of her equipment by herself. Experience was the best teacher; that was the dwarven way. Just start digging, and eventually you might strike adamantium.

This library, though, was full of schist.

Mafol searched the tower from top to bottom, banging fruitlessly on every locked door. At last she found her teacher sitting in what must be the kitchen, two levels beneath the ground. His other two students, Cadem Fireslash the annoying human and Osod Bleachedcarcass the jaguar person with a dwarven name, were sitting at the stone table with him as they discussed something in a tongue Mafol didn't understand. 

"Well?" Her teacher raised a single bone-white eyebrow at her and crossed his arms. "Have you discovered the secret yet?"

"I've read every book and scroll and quire on every shelf and in every box in the library," Mafol said. "Must I discourse on the nature of death for a year and a day before you show me the slab?"

The aged dwarf began laughing, and Mafol shivered – his merriment sounded like wind over unburied bones, or like the last gasp of the fallen. "I have occasionally missed the straightforward manners of the nation of my birth," he said, and slowly stood. "Come. We keep it locked below, far from filching fingers."

They descended the tower's central stairwell, the other two students remaining above. Deeper and deeper they went, Mafol counting fifty layers, then a hundred. At last they came to a wall of smooth blue rock, and set within, a bright door of a metal Mafol had never seen before yet knew from legends.

Adamantium.

Her teacher drew a key of the same metal from his pocket and opened the door. Inside was a room, and inside the room a pedestal, and behind the pedestal, a statue of a mighty demon: all were carved from slade, dark and unmistakable.

And on the pedestal, the stone slab she'd come all this way to find.

Mafol stepped into the room, and into her future.

* * *

_In early spring of the year 845,_ First The Tower, Then The World! _was created in Bonecurled by Mafol Craftsguarded._

_In mid autumn of the year 845,_ Treatise On The Dwarf _was created in Bonecurled by Mafol Craftsguarded._

* * *

Years passed, then decades. Mafol marked the time by the books she wrote. She barely spared a thought when the twenty-third anniversary of her arrival at the tower passed; she was now more than twice as old as she'd been when she arrived. Yet the work before her stretched out far beyond the reach of her understanding. She had caught a glimpse of the realms beyond this one, of the horrors of the netherworld, and that glimmer of her people's fate drove her on long after she'd forgotten her sister's face and the sound of her mother's voice.

She didn't need to remember the sight of her sister's death to remember how watching the massacre and subsequent feast had made her feel. Her need for vengeance drove her with an immediacy that mere hunger and thirst couldn't match.

No one approached Bonecurled without a death wish of one sort or another, but as decades passed, whispers grew that the necromancers of the tower were particularly harsh to elves. Elvish bones were found outside gnawed clean of flesh, or cracked and boiled, while all other bodies disappeared into the tower, eventually emerging to reinforce the armies of the dead that guarded it. But everyone in the civilized world knew that elves did not study death, and the races that did, did not eat sapient flesh.

In Bonecurled there were no such provisions. There was only meat outside the tower, and family within.

Mafol had had annoying siblings in her past life; Cadem wasn't so bad. She downright enjoyed Osod's company; the jaguar person had a fascination with history that was contagious. And if Mafol was particularly interested in the history of war, and battles, and how the elves might be defeated – well, everyone had come to the tower for their own reasons. There was no judgment in Bonecurled. There were only the dead, and those who commanded them.

Time passed. She no longer had any need of sleep, but Mafol daydreamed of Bronzebelts sometimes. The mountainhome in her thoughts stood bare of all but bones, and year by year, those decayed until nothing was left but dust and bitterness and the wind blowing through the empty halls.

"When at last you succeed," her teacher told her one night as the four of them sewed fresh bodies back together in preparation for the ritual of raising, "remember that two dwarves will survive after all the elves have perished."

"And then I will eat Thalu Cycloneangel's heart," Mafol vowed.

Her teacher nodded in acceptance, and they stiched onwards.

And the armies of the dead outside Bonecurled grew, and grew, and grew. The oldest corpses decayed into walking bones, but walk they did, and rend, and tear.

Until at last certainty struck. It was time.

Mafol bid farewell to her teacher and her siblings, gathered up her armies, and began to walk east. The autumn winds blew chill through her bones, but the magics of the dead knew no season or temperature. Onward they walked, for days and weeks, until they came to an elven village.

They left it behind two hours later, empty of all but bloodstains. Mafol's army had grown larger by twenty-three corpses.

She swept up the elven nation village by village. Some of her corpses fell and could not be revived, but there were always more and fresher to be had. Word must have spread among the living. Outside one town – for the elven villages were all gone by now, consumed by Mafol's army – she met a human mercenary troupe.

"You bastard – oh, fuck." The human leader's jaw dropped. "A dwarf. I thought you were all dead."

"Two of us remain," Mafol said. "I have no quarrel with you, but if you serve the elf-queen, you _will_ die." She raised her arm, and the dead began to move.

The human leader stared at Mafol and then at her shambling servants. "You know what, I'm not getting paid enough for this," she muttered, and then she signaled to her troops. The humans fell away. Mafol's army swarmed into the town, and by the time the screaming stopped and the final corpses had stilled, the humans were long gone.

They didn't bother her again.

The elves, though – they massed and attacked. No matter. Mafol had more bodies than they did, and hers felt neither pain nor hunger nor thirst; only the inexorable driving need for vengeance remained.

And then there was only the final elvish stronghold, Fluterim, and the queen. Mafol saved her for last, and when every other elf had fallen, she dragged the elf-queen out into the square by her long golden hair and cut out her heart and ate it, right there, in the light of the sun.

Vengeance tasted like copper and ashes.

A shade of her teacher stepped forth from the crowd of the dead; sending such an image was an advanced skill Mafol had yet to learn. "Tell me, child: is this sufficient reparation for the destruction of your homeland?"

Mafol looked out over the silent groves of Fluterim with dead eyes. "Bonecurled is my home," she said, and turned her back as her undead minions swarmed over the corpses of the last of the elves and began to feast.

* * *

_In 917, mid winter, an army of the dead attacked the Dreamy Fog of the Sea of Ivy at Fluterim. Leader of the attack was the dwarven necromancer Mafol Craftsguarded, and the defenders were led by the elf Thalu Cycloneheart._

_In 917, mid winter, an army of the dead led by Mafol Craftsguarded defeated the Sea of Ivy and destroyed Fluterim during the Battles of Crucifying as part of the War of Flesh and Bones._

_In 917, mid winter, Mafol Craftsguarded defeated Thalu Cycloneheart in battle and devoured her flesh._

_In early spring of the year 918,_ Bronzebelts: Before And After _was created in Bonecurled by Mafol Craftsguarded._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to demitas for beta reading.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Justice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27514114) by [ffg_podfics (flowersforgraves)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersforgraves/pseuds/ffg_podfics)




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